Breaking new ground in the research on L2 speakers' use of Korean honorifics

Lucien Brown. 2011. Korean Honorifics and Politeness in Second Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Korean Honorifics and Politeness in Second Language Learning by Lucien Brown is
part of John Benjamins’ Pragmatics & Beyond New Series. Undeniably, the Korean
honorifics system plays a pivotal role in Korean language acquisition, but previous
research has largely been confined to approaching honorifics as a grammatical
feature from a static angle with very limited focus on the acquisition, development or
usage of honorifics. Lucien Brown, however, exhibits a strong dual commitment
throughout the book: on one hand, it fills a considerable gap in the literature on
Korean honorifics acquisition; on the other hand, it offers an in-depth exploration of
re-framing and re-facing – the constant dynamic process of enriching, re-analyzing or
re-negotiating existing frames of knowledge and that of constructing a new
presentation of the self in interaction from the perspective of interlanguage
pragmatics. To this end, he examines a large body of data collected through a blend
of methods, which provides a rich and fertile site for exploring the complexities and
intricacies of L2 speakers using Korean honorifics.

The book is comprised of 9 chapters and appendices. Chapter 1 provides the
contextual and methodological background to the study. At the outset, the author
presents the goals and research questions of the study: the competence that
advanced speakers of Korean as a Second Language have of the Korean honorifics
system and the effects of social identities and ideologies on honorifics development.
After briefly outlining previous approaches to the acquisition of Korean honorifics, the
author focuses on the interlanguage pragmatics approach adopted in his study.
Then, detailed information about participants, data collection techniques and the
methodology are provided.

With a view to providing a point of reference for observations in the study, Brown
presents a highly detailed description of the contemporary Korean honorifics system
in Chapter 2. Honorifics are defined as “resources for indexing the relative position of
interlocutors, referents and bystanders either in the lexicon or the morpho-syntax of a
language” (13) by recourse to cross-linguistic examples. To facilitate readers’
understanding, not only does the author give an isolated account of the component
parts of the Korean honorifics system, but he also highlights the interplay between
the different parts of the honorifics system and the major factors influencing usage of
honorifics (including power and distance between

interlocutors, level of formality, and
such strategic uses as the softening of assertion, sarcasm, anger, insults and jokes).
It is noteworthy that honorific forms are viewed as indexing degrees of “separation”
and “connection” from a dynamic perspective rather than from a static semantic
angle. The author concludes this chapter by briefly commenting on major differences
between Korean and Japanese honorifics since the latter has captured more
attention in previous literature. For example, the use of honorifics in Japanese is
related to femininity and beauty whereas the use of high honorific forms in Korean
are perceived as still, authoritarian and masculine.

The theoretical background of the study on Korean honorifics is presented from
socio-pragmatic and interlanguage pragmatic perspectives in Chapters 3 and 4. First,
Brown reviews the position of honorifics in previous politeness research by
examining four approaches: Brown and Levinson’s “honorifics as FTA (face
threatening act) mitigators” (60), Hwang and Ide’s “honorifics as deference or
discernment” which are socio-pragmatically or grammatically obligatory (61), Watts’
“relational work” model viewing honorifics as “politic” instead of “polite” (63) and Lee
and Yoo’s normative/strategic framework, stating that the “normative usage” of
honorifics is intended to meet social expectations, and the marked and intentionally
controlled “strategic usage” is employed to pursue specific motives (65). It is revealed
that these dominating theoretical camps on “politeness” and “honorifics” are not
adequate to account for Korean honorifics use. Accordingly, the author argues that a
“frame-based” view of politeness (Terkourafi 2003, 2005) and a remodeled version of
“face” (Arundale 2006) can be employed to address those deficiencies. Within the
“frame-based” politeness model, frames are viewed as “structures of expectation”
(67) and “politeness consists in the regularity of the co-occurrence between linguistic
expressions and a given context” (67). The author then expands the model by
positing that politeness does not necessarily apply to all types of communication and
that politeness ideologies have a significant bearing on the use of honorifics.
Thereafter, the author presents his Korean-specific concept of face as relational and
interactional in the study of interlanguage pragmatics. Finally, the author discusses
the four defining features of Korean politeness ideologies (i.e. indexical politeness,
hierarchical patterns, obligation and conformity, and intimacy and closeness) and
interprets how they differ from their “Western” counterparts.

Chapter 4 is focused on a framework that the author adopts to analyze interlanguage
pragmatic development in Korean honorifics. After briefly presenting the definition of
pragma-linguistic knowledge as “pragmatic phenomena oriented towards the
grammatical or organizational end of the scale” (86), the author models the
development of L2

sociopragmatic knowledge as re-framing by which L2 speakers
re-analyze, re-negotiate, and enrich existing frames. These processes are influenced
by such factors as the speakers’ pre-existing language(s) and culture(s), pragmatic
over- and under-generalization, and teacher-fronted metapragmatic instruction and
teaching materials. The construction of a new presentation of the self is dubbed as
re-facing which is influenced by attitudes of the Korean community (language
inheritance) and attitudes of L2 speakers (language affiliation).

Chapters 5, 6, 7 and 8 are devoted to fine-grained analyses of four types of data
collected by means of discourse completion test (DCT), role-play, natural
conversation and “learner stories” through a mixture of quantitative and qualitative
research methods. In Chapter 5, data collected by DCTs, taken by 20 advanced
second-language (L2) speakers from “Western” backgrounds and 40 native Korean
speakers, are put under analysis in three aspects: hearer honorifics, referent
honorifics and forms of address. The findings reveal that

1.

L2 speakers use honorifics with less variation than L1 speakers;

2.

L2 speakers are less sensitive to power than distance or formality in terms of
honorifics usage and tend to avoid saliently subservient or condescending
language; and

3.

notable differences exist among L2 speakers in that exchange students and
heritage speakers are inclined to overgeneralize non-honorific language
whereas professionals and non-heritage speakers tend to overuse honorific
language.

In Chapter 6, Brown elicits data from recordings of staged role-plays between the 20
L2 participants and L1 speaker partners in two contrasting power-distance
relationships: the “professor” role-play and the “friend” role-play. Likewise, he takes a
close look at the three aspects mentioned in Chapter 5. Data analysis reveals that L2
speakers show inadequate pragma-linguistic competence concerning referent
honorifics. It also manifests a connection between honorifics use by L2 speakers and
their perceptions and beliefs regarding politeness in two ways. First, L2 speakers
avoid “too high” or “too low” honorifics because it is incompatible with their egalitarian
and reciprocal social values. Second, L2 speakers tend to adapt the modulation
politeness strategy when upgrading to honorific styles as a sign of “respect” due to
their pre-existing ideologies in the Western context.

The study is labeled as “incomplete” due to the fact that data were collected by
artificial means. Thus, to lend more force and validity to his study, the author
provides an empirical analysis of honorifics use in real-world interactions in the
following two chapters. In Chapter 7, the author utilizes recorded naturally occurring
conversational data. He breaks down these

data into two separate sections:
interactions with status superiors and new acquaintances and interactions with
intimate status equals and inferiors. Data analysis not only confirms the two patterns
found in the elicited data from DCTs and role-plays in real-world interactions but also
uncovers a new pattern of panmal ‘non-honorific language’ use towards
strangers/elders. The author accounts for these three patterns in relation to the
identities and politeness ideologies of the participants. On one hand, he concludes
that L2 speakers’ honorifics use is affected by both their own identity as “foreigners”
and the attitudes of the Korean community, which provides a possible explanation of
cases where exchange students mistakenly used non-honorifics when contaymal
‘honorific language’ was desirable or even obligatory. On the other hand, he
reiterates that L2 speakers’ misuse of honorifics/non-honorifics is attributable to their
pragma-linguistic deficiencies, lack of opportunities to establish appropriate social
relationships and more egalitarian politeness ideologies of “Westerners”.

Finally, Chapter 8 focuses on “honorific sensitive incidents” by means of participants’
retrospective narratives of actual incidents during their interactions with Korean
native speakers. The author analyzes collected data from three angles: the lack of
pragma-linguistic competence of L2 speakers, the attitudes of the local Korean
community and L2 speakers’ negotiation of their own identity. The findings reveal that

L1 speakers initiate the application of “different” honorifics either due to their
perception that interactions with non-Koreans do not necessarily follow the
same norms as Korean-Korean conversations or their utilization of L2 speakers’
lack of honorific knowledge for their own strategic ends; and

3.

L2 speakers attempt to actively diverge from hierarchical or non-reciprocal use
of honorifics and negotiate egalitarian modes of interaction.

In the concluding chapter, the author first recapitulates the major findings with regard
to the Korean honorifics competence of L2 speakers and analyzes their pragmalinguistic
deficiencies within the framework of social identities and politeness
ideologies. He then discusses the implications of the study at length in three different
areas: politeness research, interlanguage pragmatics and language pedagogy.
Lastly, recommendations are made for future research on Korean honorifics by
placing emphasis on (diverse) speech groups’ diversity and different settings for data
collection.

Overall, the strengths of Brown’s well-implemented work can be summarized at two
levels: at the first level, this book presents theoretical contributions to politeness
theory, interlanguage pragmatics and Korean honorifics acquisition as well as
intriguing findings about its rich data in a concise, lucid and accessible manner.
Building upon the author’s observations and other researchers’ theoretical models,
Brown demonstrates and promotes a remodeled version of re-framing and re-facing
from a dynamic and context-sensitive perspective by delineating the pragmatic
development of L2 speakers in Korean honorifics through negotiation of politeness
between their socially constructed identities in communication with Korean native
speakers. In addition, the study has pedagogical implications for developing L2
speakers’ competence in Korean honorifics. The second level is that the analyses of
data from authentic natural interactions are literally the beginning of a new subfield of
Korean honorifics research from an emic perspective. Even though DCTs and staged
role plays are deemed as mirroring natural interactions, these elicited data remain
“non-natural” or “contrived” in contrast to naturally occurring data. By analyzing
recordings of non-manipulated interactions, researchers can penetrate the actual
language use by L2 speakers.

Nevertheless, I have a certain degree of skepticism towards one minor point of the
study. The author labels the participants as having “Western” backgrounds due to the
fact that “the socialization that all of these speakers had undergone in Western
society had shaped (or at least played a major role in shaping) the assumptions they
held regarding human interaction” (9). This kind of classification is arbitrary, thus
lacking sufficient validity. Moreover, it is an oversimplification to attribute L2
speakers’ failures in using Korean honorifics appropriately to their egalitarian
politeness ideology. Before arriving at this conclusion, it would be preferable and
more convincing had the author conducted a contrastive analysis of Korean
honorifics use of L2 speakers from different cultural backgrounds and explored

whether errors in their application of honorifics are determined by language-specific
or by culture-specific factors.

In conclusion, this book belongs on the shelves of scholars involved in research on
interlanguage pragmatics and politeness as well as textbook writers, syllabus
designers and KSL (Korean as a second language) teachers.

References

Arundale, Robert. 2006. Face as relational and interactional: A communication
framework for research on face, facework and politeness. Journal of Politeness
Research 2: 193–216.